In video of a 2003 performance of CAPTL (first presented at Brown in 1986), Goulis is back in the red suit and this time wearing a model of the capital building dome as a mask. He drags out a body wrapped in American flags as if for burial and then stabs little US flags into it. It's an exorcism of all the crap of America. "That night [President] Bush started firing on Iraq after I finished my performance," he recalls.

Work in cable television led Goulis to Worcester, where he founded and ran the Worcester Artist Group from 1987 to '91; then he led the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque. He returned to Providence in 1995 to serve as AS220's gallery director for three years. He's performed sketch comedy and absurdist skits with AS220's Empire Revue for nearly seven years.

And he has been making folksy sculptures in recent years about televisions as shrines and societal mother, about remote controls as talismans of our efforts to control our lives. He also saved some big sign letters from the defunct Sleepy's mattress store in Cranston. Here they glow red on the wall, reading, "YES."

"It was just kind of an affirmation," Goulis says. "You stand in front of it and you have this really wonderful healthy glow on your face whoever you are. It's warm. It's inviting."